The Cue Card

Hi all. Happy Mother’s Day. I hope you’re having fun celebrating somewhere. I am thinking of my Mom and plan to enjoy some gardening on a partly sunny spring day.

Last week was pretty good — it included my first round of golf for the season with my ladies league, yay. Of course I was sort of rusty but that’s to be expected since I haven’t played since last September. It was good fun nonetheless, and on the way home I stopped off to visit a farm that has seven miniature donkeys … the sole boy of the group is a sweet runt named Holger. I befriended the owners a couple months ago and now they sometimes let me come and brush the donkeys and feed them. They are very cute and I’m learning about how to care for them. Apparently the donkeys always need straw in addition to hay but can’t over-graze. They must watch how much they eat, which is key … and for us all, lol. I will try to get some better photos when I visit them next time. 

Meanwhile last night we watched the movie adaptation of Remarkably Bright Creatures on Netflix based on the novel by Shelby Van Pelt and it was quite heartwarming and better than I thought it’d be. The filmmakers did a good job making the octopus Marcellus look real and captivating, even though he’s mostly computer generated. They were able to do that by using interchangeable footage of a real-life Pacific octopus named Agnetha, who lives at the Vancouver Aquarium. And the actors did well, with Sally Field giving a good performance as Tova, the cleaning lady at the aquarium who befriends Marcellus. The movie brings the story to life in almost a better way than I thought the novel did … but see what you think. 

We also finished watching Season 1 of the Netflix comedy series A Man on the Inside starring Ted Danson as a man who is hired to go undercover at a retirement home in San Francisco to solve a theft. It’s enjoyable and we liked how it’s light and funny and also manages to touch on real themes of aging, loneliness, and connection at the retirement place.

Apparently the show is based on a true 2020 documentary about an 83-year-old man who went undercover at a Chilean nursing home to investigate potential elder abuse. In the U.S. series, Ted Danson is his usual charming, suave self and has gained attention in the role. The show has been a success apparently and has already been renewed for Season 3.

And now in book news you might have heard last week that author Daniel Kraus, a writer of the horror genre, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his novel Angel Down, which was a New York Times Best Book of 2025. According to the Times, it’s a World War I novel, told in one sprawling, 285-page-long sentence, about a failed draft dodger who finds an angel on the battlefield.

The novel seems rather unusual with its structure and is said to be very graphic of its depiction of the war in the trenches. And apparently it marks the first time a horror-tinged novel has won the award since Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road in 2007. I’m curious enough to want to investigate after listening to Daniel Kraus be interviewed about it on the New York Times podcast and seeing Carmen’s favorable review of it too on Goodreads. 

Now here (above) is a photo recap of the books I finished in April. I enjoyed most — if not all of these — so it’s hard to pick a favorite, but Tina and I had a good discussion while reading Buckeye, so I’ll go ahead and choose that one. Meanwhile, the outlook for May reading is looking much slower as I’ve taken on a very long fall novel to review for Publishers Weekly. This undisclosed novel will likely consume me this entire month, alas. But in the meantime I will try the audio of Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke, which will be a buddy read again with Tina at Turn the Page, who has the print version. We will see what all the fuss is about with this bestselling new novel.

• A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar (audiobook, dystopian novel) — 2025
• Buckeye by Patrick Ryan (hardback, a buddy read with Tina at Turn the Page) — 2025 
• Good Dirt by Charmaine Wilkerson (audiobook, novel) — 2025
• 107 Days by Kamala Harris (hardback, ghostwritten by Geraldine Brooks!) — 2025
• Cape Fever by Nadia Davids (audiobook, novel) — 2025
• A Bad, Bad Place by Frances Crawford (paperback, crime debut novel) — 2026

And now I’ll leave you with a couple reviews of what I finished while I was away in California.

Cape Fever by Nadia Davids / Simon & Schuster / 240 pages / 2025

4.3+ stars. I was quite impressed by this Gothic tale set in a colonial town in 1920 about a young girl, Soraya Matas, who lives in the Muslim quarters part of town and comes to work as a maid for Alice Hattingh, a British widowed settler. Alice is a snooty lady, who is quick to set Soraya straight about what she wants done about the house and tells Soraya that she’s required as a live-in maid and can only go home once a fortnight to visit her family, much to Soraya’s disappointment. 

Soraya finds the cleaning work pretty dull and repetitive but is happy at first and is able to commune with a couple ghosts in the house. Then Mrs. Hattingh starts putting more demands on her and longer stays as she is expecting her son’s return from London, who was injured in the war. To appease Soraya, Mrs. Hattingh offers to write letters for her to Soraya’s betrothed young man since she’s led to believe Soraya can’t read or write. It’s during these letter writing engagements between maid and employer that things take a turn. 

It’s a good cat and mouse kind of Gothic tale, with subtly tense chess moves between the two — maid and employer — to figure out what the other is doing and how to subvert them. The publisher notes that the novel is “reminiscent of works by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Daphne du Maurier” and I think that’s a good comparison. This book has put author Nadia Davids on the map for me in a good way, so I will look for whatever she writes next. She grew up in Cape Town, South Africa, and is a notable playwright in addition to writing fiction. She is now said to live in California.

A Bad Bad Place by Frances Crawford / Soho Crime / 353 pages / 2026

3.75 stars. This is a coming-of-age, crime debut novel set in 1979 Glasgow, Scotland. It alternates chapters between 12-year-old Janey Devine, who finds a dead body while out walking her dog, which turns her young life upside down … and her 66-year-old grandma Maggie, who is trying to raise and protect her. It turns out the victim was the 22-year-old daughter of a local crime boss, who now wants to know more from Janey (since she found her) as do the police. 

Meanwhile Janey is full of bad dreams about the dead girl and is anxious about the killer trying to get her. She’s a mess, and her grandma, who’s raising her, is doing her best to keep a waitress job and ease Janey’s fears and get her life back to normal. But Janey is keeping something from the police and her grandma that she knows about the murder that is keeping her on edge. As  the viewpoints of Janey and her Grandma alternate, the case unfolds and the hunt for the murderer ratchets up in their tight-knit community. 

I found the first half of the novel pretty strong amid the characters in their working-class, gritty neighborhood — I liked young Janey and sympathized with what she’s going through — and her loss of innocence in this coming-of-age crime tale. There are a number of shady types who could have committed the murder. The second half dithers around a bit – with some repetition – and loses some pacing, but still I was patient to find justice as Janey wanted. Written in a bit of a Glasgow dialect, it’s a debut with plenty of atmosphere of the neighborhood and crime. You can pretty much feel its tough circumstances through your fingertips. 

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read any of these novels mentioned — and if so, what did you think?  Have a great week. 

Hi. How is everyone doing? I’m away this week in Southern California visiting family, so I will leave a briefer post than usual today. I took this picture of sailboats, which were just a few of the 76 boats competing in the annual Newport to Ensenada sailboat race that spans 125 miles over a couple days. This is a race that my father enjoyed doing with a crew for over 30 years, so watching the boats go by from the pier brought back various memories. He loved sailing and would’ve appreciated the wind on the day, though it was blowing as a headwind from the direction they were going.

So far, it’s been a good trip seeing family I hadn’t seen in a year … and I still plan to make it to the desert to visit a friend and my hometown before returning to the North next weekend.

Currently I’m reading the debut crime novel A Bad Bad Place by Scottish author Frances Crawford about a young 12-year-old protagonist who, while out walking her dog, stumbles upon a dead body and pretty soon folks in her tight-knit community in Glasgow are looking for answers. It’s a bit of a coming-of-age tale and a whodunnit.

I’m also listening to the audiobook of the novel Cape Fever by Nadia Davids about a young Muslim maid in 1920 who comes to work for an enigmatic widower (Mrs. Hattingh) in a decaying manor. She starts seeing some spirits in the house and perhaps all is not what it seems. Both books appear to be good ones though I still have a ways to go with them before deciding how good they are.

Meanwhile, you might have seen that the shortlist of the Women’s Prize for Fiction was announced this past week with these six novels (above) making the list. I’ve read two of these: Virginia Evans’s novel The Correspondent and Lily King’s Heart the Lover and I need to investigate the rest. I know about the novels Dominion and Susan Choi’s novel Flashlight, but the other two: The Mercy Step and Kingfisher I hadn’t heard of before. Have you?

You might recall that the Women’s Prize is awarded annually to the author of the best full-length novel of the year written in English and published in the UK. So even though Virginia Evans, Susan Choi, Addie Citchens, and Lily King are American writers, since their novels were also published in the UK, they qualify. Which of these do you think will win when the Prize is announced on June 11? Hmm, I need to read a couple more before deciding.

Also the shortlist for the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction was announced … with these five books (above) making the list. Of these, I listened to the audio of A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar, which was very good, and I’d also like to get to The White Hot by Quiara Alegría Hudes. I’d say either of these two are favored to win on June 2 as I don’t know of the others … but who knows if they will pull an upset.

You recall that the Carol Shields Prize is an English-language award that “celebrates creativity and excellence in fiction by women and non-binary writers in Canada and the United States.” So we will see which comes out on top. Have you read any of these up for either prize?

And now I will bid you adieu. Last night we had some hard rain at the coast, wow it came down! I hope you are enjoying the end of April along with some good books. Happy reading.

Hi Bookworms. I hope all is well and that if you’re in the U.S. you got your taxes done this past week, argh. It marked the second year since my mother’s passing, which still feels sad along with my dad’s a year later. I plan to visit the cemetery when I go to California this coming week.

I will also see my sister and niece who is running in her second Boston marathon this Monday! Just last year she had her first baby, so it is exciting she is back racing and that her baby daughter, husband, and her parents will all be there cheering her on. I’m pumped that she’s running. It reminds me back in 1991 when I ran the Marine Corps Marathon in D.C., so I can relate to the excitement. It’s quite an experience in those big races. I once was an avid runner in my teens through my thirties, but later in life switched to cycling, which is a bit easier on the body, lol. 

Meanwhile this week we had a surprisingly big snowstorm on Wednesday night into Thursday and got like six to eight inches of snow. It was crazy. Above is a photo of our front poplar trees after it was over. The wind was blowing and there were actually snowdrifts piled up in places. But now the forecast is expected to be in the 60s F this week, so it’ll be a big melt-athon. Instead of a marathon here it’ll be a melt-athon, ha. See how the times have changed. 

In book news, I’m a bit bummed to be missing the L.A. Festival of Books this weekend, which I’ve always wanted to go to. I never seem to plan my SoCal visits right. But be on the lookout this coming Wednesday as the shortlist for the Women’s Prize for Fiction will be announced. The longlist of 16 books will be paired down to just 6 books. Some of the authors I’ve read whose books are on the longlist include: Charlotte McConaghy, Megha Majumdar, Katie Kitamura, Virginia Evans, Lily King, and Susan Choi (though not that title). And I still want to read Addie E. Citchens’s debut Dominion, which is on the longlist too. So we will see which books make the shortlist. Then there will be time to read more before the winner is announced on June 11. So we will see.

And now here are a couple of reviews of what I finished lately.

Good Dirt by Charmaine Wilkerson / Ballantine / 368 pages / 2025

3.5 stars. Synopsis: This follows the daughter of a prominent African American New England family whose trauma over a violent home invasion when she was 10 years old still affects her life many years later.  

Near the novel’s beginning, Ebby Freeman, an editor, is around 30 when she’s jilted at the altar by her white fiancé, who’s unsure if he can continue to contend with her inner trauma. Later, Ebby flees to a rural place in France to find solace only to run into her ex there and his new girlfriend. Yikes, talk about an unfortunate coincidence. There, her thoughts meander to issues surrounding the long ago unsolved home invasion tragedy and a prized heirloom that was broken then, which was made by an enslaved ancestor. 

The narrative alternates between Ebby’s present dealing with her recent wedding heartbreak and long ago trauma … and the past about her enslaved ancestors’ lives who made the stonework jar and passed it along. The antique jar means a lot to Ebby’s family … but after the home invasion in 2000 they put it away so as not to be reminded. But now Ebby is trying to write something about those who had the jar. Soon more information comes to light in the midst of her being jilted, surrounding the jar and the home invasion. And as Ebby returns home there are some resolutions that come about within her family. 

My Thoughts: I liked some of the storytelling and issues that this novel touches on … about legacy and an enslaved ancestor’s stonework passed down among generations of their family … and trying to overcome the harsh trauma of a past violent attack. There is some good soul-searching … although somehow I found the plot didn’t fully come together in its execution. It seemed at times repetitive and the pacing slow. It needed some action or a bit more of something to propel things forward. Still I think I’d like to go back and read the author’s first novel Black Cake, which was more popular and well-regarded. 

107 Days by Kamala Harris / Simon & Schuster 320 pages / 2025

4+ stars. One would think this would be too painful to read and re-live … those scramble of days when President Biden dropped out of the presidential election after his disastrous debate performance, and Vice President Harris tried her best to assemble a campaign that would win the election in the 107 days left.

I thought it would be too hard for me to revisit, but instead her book was worthwhile knowing … perhaps even for my own continued attempted recovery after the election loss. And though the end election result was the opposite of what I wanted for the country, there are some takeaways from reading her book (even a few good ones) to glean from it. For one, it’s a pretty good behind-the-scenes look at what happened during the presidential campaign … the mistakes and obstacles along the way … the people and strategy … and what was going through the VP’s mind during various turns.

And though Harris is critical of the Biden circle for various reasons and also castigates her opponent, it’s not exactly a blame others kind of book. I know people will think she’s just making excuses for her loss, but it seems mainly she lays it on the line of what went down in a pretty down to earth way. It’s not all PR glossy kind of junk of what she accomplished or thought she could do. I usually hate political books for that reason. But this felt a bit more real and personal … in what she was trying to do and in looking back trying to come to grips about such a huge fateful chance and turn in history. Whatever you might think of her, it seems she gave the campaign her all.

The structure of the book … in which it briefly counts down day by day what happened and the days left till the election works well. It even gives the narrative a bit of suspense even though our minds well know and dread what happened. If only we could change it. What a terrible blow to the country … which will likely never recover or be the same ever again.

Perhaps we can blame the election result on the nearly 90 million Americans, roughly 36 percent of the eligible voting age population, who did not vote. Which is a greater number of people than who voted for either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris. Did the non-voters think it wouldn’t affect their lives and concerns? Did they think they could just sit it out? How crazy.

Kamala writes at the end: “One hundred and seven days were not, in the end, long enough to accomplish the task of winning the presidency. But we accomplished other things, as I learn every day.” Such as inspiring young people and others.

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read these and if so, what did you think? Happy reading.

Hi Bookworms, Happy Easter. I hope you’re having a wonderful weekend full of chocolate bunnies, Easter eggs, and spring flowers. I’m holding down the fort with the dogs since my husband is away on a trip.

We had a wild snowstorm here a couple days ago that left about six inches of heavy white stuff on the ground but then within 48 hours it was gone as if we’d never had it. The earth just soaked it up. Meanwhile I’ve been going through a surge of spring cleaning, paring down things in closets and drawers, and taking unwanted things and clothes to the thrift shop. It feels great once you set your mind to it. Nothing is safe from the purge, except perhaps books, lol.

Afterwards Willow and I got some reading done in the sunroom (see photo). She was snoozing a bit more than reading, but we hadn’t been in there all winter since it’s not heated. We enjoyed our inaugural sunroom siesta, yay. Do you have a special spot or place where you like to read?

And now here (above) are a couple novels that came in for me at the library. Will I get to these? Time will tell. I hope they are good.

• The Golden Boy by Patricia Finn —about “a disgraced TV executive and his wife who retire to Maui, where their life of leisure is interrupted by news that they’ve been named guardians to a late friend’s four grandchildren,” according to PW. And:
• Upward Bound by Woody Brown — that “delves into the lives and minds of the disabled residents of an adult day care center in Southern California.”

And now below are a few reviews of what I finished lately. All three were audiobook listens, while I’m currently reading Buckeye as a buddy read with Tina at Turn the Page. We’ll be done this week, so I’ll review it next time.

A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar / Knopf / 224 pages / 2025

Synopsis: In a near future Kolkata, India, with intense heat and food scarcity, a woman referred to as Ma, the manager of a local shelter, is gearing up to leave on a flight in seven days with her two-year-old daughter Mishti and her father Dadu to join her scientist husband in Michigan. But in the morning she finds that her purse is missing and has been stolen with their passports and special climate visas. She has less than a week to find the thief and their coveted documents. It’s a desperate search, and along the way their lives and the teenage thief Boomba’s backstory is revealed and his attempt to care for his family in need.

My Thoughts: 4 stars. This turns into a compelling doozy. Which leaves you with the sick feeling: never to lose your passport and visa in the days before your flight, especially when you’re trying to flee a collapsing city. The police won’t help you, and the consulate will need a police report which you can’t get. Poor Ma, she battles on in desperation with her father Dadu helping … trying to find the thief. Meanwhile her husband occasionally calls, but she keeps him in the dark, without telling him what’s happening. He’s more clueless than even baby Mishti, who senses the troubles and is given sweet onions to eat since that’s what there is.

I admit I wanted to strangle the young thief Boomba for his series of transgressions though the plot throws some sympathy his way. And Ma, who’s taken a bit from the shelter in the past, is not too squeaky clean herself. Ma and Boomba are trying to do what they can to get by and help their families. Still mostly you hope beyond hope that Ma, Dadu, and Mishti will be on that damn flight … get on the tarmac and lift off. Down the stretch you’ll be navigating some twists and then the ending will hit down like a hammer. It’s a short novel that packs a punch.

Train Dreams by Denis Johnson / FSG / 116 pages / 2011

4.5 stars. I loved the storytelling and earthiness of this novella … the depictions of the natural world and the oddities Robert Grenier sees living out West during the first decades of the 20th century. Robert is an adopted orphan who grows up in Idaho in the 1890s. He works in lumber and for the railroad then takes a job in Washington state repairing the Gorge bridge, only to return home later to find his valley up in flames.

What happens to his wife and child early in the book and the sadness he goes through is very hard and touches down to the bone. He struggles with his own guilt, which almost overwhelms him, yet continues on to have an array of experiences, seeing the world in ways that you come to know. There’s even a bit of humor or whimsy to the characters and animals he comes across working as a wagon driver. Like he almost saw Elvis Presley at a train stop once but he was hung up and didn’t. Though he did see the fattest man in the world when he came through town on an exhibit.

Robert’s grief makes him see wolf creatures too at times … and he wonders if one is his daughter. All around it’s a good short almost mystical tale at times that I wished had been made into a full-fledged novel about Robert Grenier. This was my first Denis Johnson book but now I’d like to read his others.

The movie adaptation of Train Dreams with Joel Edgerton is good too. It’s a quiet film that gets across Robert’s struggles and his life in the West. It received an Oscar nomination for Best Picture, Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, and Original Song but didn’t win any in the end. Interesting too — is that Will Patton, who narrated the audiobook so well back in 2011, also does the voiceover narration in the 2025 film. 14 years later, wow! He should win an award for his impeccable narration. It gave me a real feel for Robert Grenier’s life.

Tinkers by Paul Harding / Bellevue / 192 pages / 2009

3 stars. This is a hard one to know what to think. It has some beautiful descriptive poetic writing to it, but the structure and piecemeal ramblings were a bit hard at times to follow and stay engaged. I’ve always wanted to read it since the novel won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2010 and is a deathbed story in which the character George reflects back on his life and father, which I thought I’d like, but it proved sort of tough to get through despite it being short.

The story follows George Crosby in the days before he dies and his memories from his childhood. It looks at George’s life as well as his father’s, Howard, who was a traveling peddler in 1920s Massachusetts. George fixes clocks for a living and Howard in a parallel narrative struggles with epileptic seizures. He bit George as a youngster which his wife commits him to a mental hospital for, but he later flees. George grows up pretty penniless but has an affinity for clocks, which there are some lyrical and metaphorical passages about.

I admired the author’s latest 2023 novel This Other Eden but Tinkers proved to be harder to fully engage with even though I was ready and willing.

That’s all for now. Have you read any of these — and if so, what did you think? Have a great week.

Hi Bookworms. I hope all is well. Does it feel like we’re racing through March or what? We’ve had much fluctuating weather here with windy 60s as well as falling temps and snowflakes too.

This weekend through Tuesday, I am busy reffing the U12 national tennis tournament here with a team of refs, so I will keep this a bit shorter than usual as I need to get to the site. The event is introducing electronic line calling this year with the benefit of players being able to challenge close line calls, which refs will check from a tablet at court side, so I hope this goes smoothly. We have 72 matches to get through today into the evening. And here you thought March Madness was all about basketball, lol. It’ll be a crazy amount of tennis.

Meanwhile here is my latest book haul that I picked up from the library.

• Brawler: Short Stories by Lauren Groff
• Evil Genius by Claire Oshetsky (novel)
• 107 Days by Kamala Haris (nonfiction)
• A Place of Tides by James Rebanks (nonfiction)

My husband has taken and is reading the Rebanks book, which is said to be about the author’s reflections on “a life-changing summer spent on a remote island off the coast of Norway, where his only companion was an old woman who practiced the ancient tradition of collecting eiderdown from birds that nest on this remarkable landscape each year.” Last year Tina at the blog Turn the Page had reviewed Rebanks’ two previous nonfiction books The Shepherd’s Life, and Pastoral Song … and I thought they sounded quite good so I picked up this latest one, which my husband will let me know about.

I’m not sure when I’ll get to the rest of these books as Tina and I plan to start a buddy read later in the week of the novel Buckeye by Patrick Ryan. It came out last fall and was a much talked about epic that weaves the intimate lives of two midwestern families across generations, from World War II to the late twentieth century. Many called it the book of the year last year — giving it 5 stars — so we can’t wait for this one. Carmen liked it a lot and tipped us off back when there was a $2.99 deal for the ebook on Amazon. Yay, it’s hard to get a recent much-awaited book cheap, but it’s good to be lucky once in a while.

In other book news, I see that it was announced that Jane Fonda will take on the role of Sybil Van Antwerp, the obsessive letter writer, in the movie adaptation of Virginia Evans’ bestselling novel The Correspondent. Wow Lionsgate snapped it up pretty quickly, but it’s still in the pre-production phase, so we will wait a bit. Also Liz Moore’s novel The God of the Woods will be coming to Netflix as an adapted TV series with Maya Hawke starring as investigator Judy Luptack … for those who liked the bestselling book. I had to look but yes, the actress is the daughter of Ethan Hawke/Uma Thurman.

And now I’ll leave you with a review of what I finished lately:

Finding Grace by Loretta Rothschild / St. Martin’s / 336 pages / 2025

3.75 stars. This debut novel by a British author came out last summer and I heard about it from Lesley at the blog Coastal Horizons. It’s one of those books you can’t say too much about its premise for fear of giving too much away. But basically it’s about a young-ish family who goes through a horrific tragedy at the start of the book … then you find out that the married couple was going through a surrogate for their second child at the time.

Four years later, Tom — the husband who survives — is raising the second child on his own with some help from his close friends … when he comes across a misaddressed letter that reveals the identity of his child’s egg donor. It’s what he does with this info — in his curiosity to meet the person — that becomes the gist of the story. It becomes a secret … that Tom doubles down on as it goes along.

I found it a good audio listen, though it seemed to go on a bit long for this type of story. I did want to strangle Tom at times as he makes plenty of bad decisions … you both sympathize with him and then are miffed by him. It’s told in alternating parts — with their lives before the tragedy … and then after the tragedy … with Tom’s dead spouse narrating the story. It makes it a bit unique though I came to want the parts in Tom’s present life to know how it plays out post-tragedy much more than the parts pre-tragedy. The story has a couple eye-rolls along the way — and whether you believe parts — still it kept me quite engaged for the duration and raises some interesting issues regarding surrogacy and parenthood.

That’s all for now. What about you — do you know about any of these books and if so, what did you think? Have a great week ahead everyone!

Hi all. How are you doing? March is going by rather quickly, eh? Though overall it’s felt like a very long winter. Will it ever end? I think it’s felt interminable in part because we haven’t gone to California like a snowbird this season due to my knee recovery and our old dog Stella who isn’t up for travels.

So here we’ve been like other Canadians not going south. And now with gas prices shooting up (due to the war) are people really traveling that much? We will hold off for a while. Meanwhile it’s been another cold week here, but it might hit the 60s this coming week! And in good luck, I saw this bald eagle (not a wild swan) sitting in one of our front trees. Baldy has been flying around lately and I’m glad he took a break to rest so I could spy on him for a while.

In book news this past week, I was sorry to see an obit in the NYT about the passing of author Dan Simmons, at age 77, who wrote an array of novels (more than 30!) that bordered between such genres as sci-fi, fantasy, horror, and historical fiction.

Perhaps his most well known was his 2007 novel The Terror that fictionalized the lost Arctic expedition of John Franklin’s in 1845 whose crew in the book is stalked across the landscape by an unusual monster. We enjoyed watching the adapted TV series on AppleTV+ that ran in 2018. It was good and eerie. Despite the sad loss of Simmons, thankfully his novels live on and there are many more to read.

Also this week I finished another nonfiction book with Jung Chang’s new memoir Fly, Wild Swans. I’m not sure why but my winter has involved more nonfiction than usual. Usually I’m a fiction nut true and blue, but lately a few memoirs and a couple histories (pictured below) have found their way into my reading. They’ve been excellent though they usually take me longer to read as I absorb all the facts. I’m just giving another spotlight to those here below along with a briefer description for those interested. They count for the Nonfiction Reader Challenge that I’m doing this year at Book’d Out.

A Backward Glance by Edith Wharton — 3.75 stars. Wharton was a fascinating, complex lady born in NYC and fluent in various languages. She was a gifted writer, an avid traveler, a dog lover, an adventurer, a gardener, and aide worker in WWI, and also very socially connected to her intellectual friends. I hoped to know all about her with this autobiography but much of it was lists of friends and acquaintances and little anecdotes mostly about her travels. She writes a lot about her friend author Henry James. Still there’s small nuggets of info I gleaned along the way: Edith’s years up until WWI, where all she lived, and how she started her literary career. There’s little about her husband but that his nose-diving health affected their lives together. She moved to France permanently after their divorce. It’s amazing all what she did, but reading a biography of her would likely be better.

Raising Hare: A Memoir by Chloe Dalton — 5 stars. This lovely true story lured me in as it went on. You might not think too much towards the beginning with its history of hares and descriptive parts about the baby wild hare who the narrator comes to raise in the English countryside, but before you know it – the story becomes hard to put down as it pulls at your heartstrings. You get inside the author’s and hare’s transformation in their journey together. I very much enjoyed the audio version read superbly by Louise Brealey. In dark times, we need more people keen, observant, and caring as this woman becomes towards the hare and the natural world. The memoir is quiet dynamite.

The Typewriter and the Guillotine by Mark Braude — 4 stars. This is an interesting look into the life of journalist Janet Flanner who wrote the Letter from Paris column for The New Yorker starting in 1925 and focuses on her years in Paris in the run-up to WWII and after the war. I enjoyed finding out about her remarkable career and personal life story. She seemed a trailblazer of sorts in her work for the magazine. The other alternating aspect of the book describes the story of serial killer Eugen Weidmann who went on a terrible crime spree in 1937 and whose trial Flanner covered in 1939. The book gives good atmosphere into the period in Paris between WWI and WWII. You get a sense of the run-up to war in the 1930s, the rise of fascism, and what was happening during those dark, unstable days.

Joyride: A Memoir by Susan Orlean — 4.5 stars. I’m an Orlean fan. I think it was her Library book and love of animals that sealed it for me over the years, and her candor too. This memoir about her life’s projects and writings interested and entertained me throughout. It made me laugh in parts too. I listened to Susan Orlean read the audiobook and liked hearing about her tips on nonfiction writing and the ins and outs of her career at publications like The New Yorker mixed in with her personal life. If you’ve been a journalism junkie in life, this is like catnip.

Fly, Wild Swans: My Mother, Myself, and China by Jung Chang — 4.5 stars. This memoir is a worthy, admirable follow-up to her mega-bestselling memoir Wild Swans from 1991 and brought me up to date on her personal life story and her family’s in China from long ago till today. During the Cultural Revolution, Jung Chang lived to tell the tale of her parents (and her father’s and grandmother’s deaths) during those very dark days and later rose to distinction through her studies. She showed great courage leaving the country to study and live abroad in Britain and later to research and write her first memoir. Then later she wrote a biography of Mao (with her husband) all the while traveling back and forth to China. She does her utmost to get out the truth about what happened under the Maoists and her being under surveillance from the current regime. The memoir is also a moving portrait of her bonds with her mother and the role model her mother was and it’s a great tribute to her. I learned quite a bit from this book about China.

I was going to write a fuller review of Fly, Wild Swans but might do that next week. Time has gotten away from me today. If you follow the Academy Awards, they are on tonight. Enjoy the Red Carpet. I have not seen too many of the films, but I have seen Hamnet (4 stars), Marty Supreme (3 stars), Sinners (3.5 stars), and the pleasing Song Sung Blue (4 stars). Have you liked any of the nominated movies?

That’s all for now. Enjoy the rest of your Sunday and the week ahead and happy reading.

Hi all. Have you sprung your clocks forward? Argh, the time change always makes me feel out of step for a while, but I usually like Daylight Savings much better. Our neighbor province — British Columbia — is moving to having permanent Daylight Savings Time, so this will be its last time change. Lucky them. Apparently Arizona stays on Standard Time to conserve energy during the hot months. So it’s all about where you live. Meanwhile, all of our snow melted away last week under warm conditions … but now we’re having a full-on blizzard today, woohoo! The birds at the feeder are taking refuge. The rest of the week looks wintry too. So winter is returning for a bit. It’s supposed to officially end by March 20. But we’ll see. 

And now here (above) are the books I finished last month in February. In January I finished seven but in February just four. I’m going backwards. I think it’s because I was taking the Wharton class on The House of Mirth and we had to prepare to discuss for four Fridays. We went over passages aloud and I read the novel a couple times over. I liked all of these books pictured, so it’s hard to pick a favorite, but after all that I should go with The House of Mirth. 

• Crux by Gabriel Tallent was a buddy read with Tina (novel, hardback)
• The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton (classic novel, ebook) 
• Raising Hare: A Memoir by Chloe Dalton (audiobook, nonfiction)
• The Typewriter and the Guillotine by Mark Braude (audiobook and hardback, finished twice) 

And now here is a photo (below) of my recent book loot I picked up from the library (and the Pip Williams novel that I recently bought at the airport, lol). I won’t get to these all in March, but I can get them back another time. Have you read any of these? 

• Kin by Tayari Jones (novel)
• Fly, Wild Swans: My Mother, Myself and China by Jung Chang (nonfiction)
• The Hounding by Xenobe Purvis (novel)
• Vigil by George Saunders (novel)
• A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers From Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx by Elaine Showalter (nonfiction)
• Heart Be at Peace by Donal Ryan (novel)
• The Bookbinder by Pip Williams (novel)
• Cape Fever by Nadia Davids (novel)

Currently I’m reading Jung Chang’s memoir: Fly, Wild Swans, which is a recent follow-up to her first bestselling memoir Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China from 1991. It’s quite a life story of her family’s survival during the Cultural Revolution and the years beyond.

I also borrowed the Elaine Showalter book (pictured above) since she was a guest lecturer at my last Edith Wharton class. She’s a literary expert and a former professor emeritus at Princeton University, so it was very cool to hear her speak about Wharton.  

And now I’ll leave you with a couple reviews of what I finished lately. Coincidentally both of these nonfiction books (below) feature two notable female writers who both wrote for the New Yorker magazine. Go figure. Also they count towards reads I’m doing this year for the Nonfiction Reader Challenge at Book’d Out.

Joyride: A Memoir by Susan Orlean / Avid Reader / 368 pages / 2025

4.5 stars. As you might know, Susan Orlean has been a longtime nonfiction writer at the New Yorker magazine where she’s written many articles and profiles over the years on a wide variety of subjects, large and small, funny, quirky, and informative. Some became books that turned into movies like The Orchid Thief that became the movie Adaptation in 2002 and her surfer girl article was made into the movie Blue Crush in 2002.

She also wrote about Rin Tin Tin (2011), and her 2018 nonfiction The Library Book was a big hit. I saw her then at our book festival where she came to talk about it and I became a fan. She followed that with her On Animals collection in 2021, which also hooked me. Overall I can relate to her love of libraries, animals, and reading and writing.

So when her memoir came out last October, I knew I had to get to it. I listened to the audiobook version, which Orlean candidly reads. Much of the book is about her career as a writer: how she got started and went about her writing projects, as well as the publications and editors she worked for (like Tina Brown), and her subjects. Personally, she grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, with good parents and got a job after college in Portland, Oregon, at a local publication, doing music reviews for a while. But it wasn’t long before she was writing for national magazines like Rolling Stone. And in 1992, she became a staff writer at the New Yorker where she has been ever since.  

Her memoir moves chronologically and openly throughout her life and career, telling things as they happened … and describing how she went about writing, her ideas, and interviews along the way. It’s safe to say she’s been all over and written on a wide variety of topics: from life in NYC to gospel singers, basketball players, back packers in Asia, animals, and travel stories and everything in between. 

She’s often funny and entertaining … even if her books at times can be meandering and sprawling. I didn’t miss a beat of her memoir. If you’re interested in journalism, you’d probably like it … as most of it is about her career in the business and her ideas on writing. She mixes in her personal life as well. She’s been married twice and has one son. She once enjoyed living in N.Y.’s Hudson Valley with chickens and other animals before moving to a historical house in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles. And there she continues on at age 70, giving readers bits of wisdom and amusement with her written words … on things both large and small. 

The Typewriter and the Guillotine: An American Journalist, a German Serial Killer, and Paris on the Eve of WWII by Mark Braude / 427 pages / 2026

3.75 stars. This nonfiction true story features an interesting brisk look into the life of Janet Flanner who was a correspondent for the New Yorker — writing the magazine’s Letter to Paris column — starting in 1925. It focuses on her years in Paris in the run-up to WWII in the 1930s … and thereafter during the war. I had not known about Flanner before, so I enjoyed finding out what she wrote and her gay personal life story. 

Flanner seemed a smart trailblazer of sorts in her work as a correspondent in Paris … along with her friend Ernest Hemingway. In addition to her Letter to Paris columns, which she signed Genet, she profiled Edith Wharton for the magazine in 1929, did a two-part profile on the Queen Mary in 1935, and then wrote a three-part profile on Adolph Hitler in 1936. 

Flanner was born in Indianapolis but wound up living in Paris, as a prominent member of America’s ex-patriate bohemian community. She lived with her longtime partner Solita Solano at the Hotel Napoleon Bonaparte, and later had another love interest, Noel Murphy, in the French countryside. (Her partners didn’t seem to mind about one another.) Flanner eventually left France in October 1939, out of Bordeaux and went by ship back to the U.S. She later returned once Paris was liberated in 1944 to write about the end of the war, including traveling to a couple of the concentration camps. 

An alternating part of the book, which introduces the reader to a serial killer — Eugen Weidmann and his story — is a bit bamboozling … but it seems to have coincided around the same time in Paris and apparently Janet Flanner wrote about his case. Eugen Weidmann was a petty criminal from Germany who crossed over the border into France after a time in prison. His crimes there started in 1937 when he kidnapped (and later killed) a 22-year-old American tourist girl who’d come to Paris. Along with a few accomplices he then went on a crime spree of murder that eventually ended when he got caught and later went on trial. Weidmann seemed an unremorseful killer, whose crimes — apparently for money — were brutal and disturbing. 

The combined narratives about Flanner and Weidmann make for a pretty revelatory account of pre-WWII Europe, providing plenty of atmosphere  overseas between WWI and WWII. You get a sense of the run up to war in the 1930s — with Flanner’s exposes on the 1936 Olympics, the 1937 World’s Fair, and her frequent travels to Germany — and the rise of fascism, and what people were thinking and dreading. There are some parallels with today that I couldn’t help but notice. Flanner had quite the life and career. Apparently she didn’t retire until 1975, after nearly a half-century chronicling European life.

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read any of these pictured and what did you think?